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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
To All First Year Law Students:
We've totally revamped our Legal Practice Skills program. No longer will we waste our time (and yours) teaching you to write a motion for summary judgment or the minutiae of citing a statute, and so forth. Any child could download an adequate brief from the Internet, slap their name on it, and pass it off as an original argument. Why squander valuable educational resources on something you already know how to do in your sleep? Instead, we'll be focusing on the core skills you will need to thrive in the current legal landscape and to stay a step ahead. The sections of our new program are titled as follows:
1. Getting the Money Up Front
Should you have any doubt as to the fundamental thesis of this section, may we suggest art school?
2. Making it Seem As Though You Are Not Really Avoiding Opposing Counsel By Facetiously Leaving Them a Voice Mail in the Evening After You're Pretty Sure They've Left the Office for the Day
This is a skill honed over many years of practice, and we will study its techniques in-depth.
3. Giving Clients the Impression You are Up at the Crack of Dawn Attending to Their Matters
We will learn the ins and outs of the technology at our disposal used regularly to create the spectacular illusion that we have contained the crisis du jour. The proprietary software used in the classroom will need to be returned at the end of the term.
4. Bluffing
It's all in the attitude, and yours will need to be adjusted.
5. Making Outrageous Demands Unsupported by Facts, Law, or Common Sense
We will take what we learned in the previous section and build upon it.
6. Getting Others to Pay for Lunch
Not as easy as it looks, but cost-effective -- and nutritious.
7. Billing Just for Thinking About Stuff
Hey, you thought of it. Why shouldn't you be able to bill for it? Some people make piles of money just for a "concept," and they usually get to see their name at least 30 lines above the first mention of the craft service.
8. Sucking Up
True, this is already in everybody's skill set, but doing it to one client while simultaneously thinking about another to maximize double-billing opportunities is not something that just comes naturally. It is sui generis to our profession, and can be perfected only through practice.
9. Being Consistently Unavailable
Failing and refusing to return phone calls is not a matter of simply resolving to resist the temptation to respond to urgent messages or deliberately not disabling the out-of-office auto reply greeting on the email -- even days after you've already returned from vacation. There are many other tricks of the trade that you haven't heard of, and we'll deconstruct them.
10. Stealing Pens
If you think you can just set up shop using your own, puny collection of office supplies, you are very much mistaken. These things are expensive, and you already have plenty of demands on your purse strings, such as the crushing debt that will be bestowed upon you upon the completion of your studies. In this class, you will master the fine art of filching from other people's fancy conference rooms (includes instruction in klepting pads, paper clips, highlighters, and post-it notes).
11. Pretending You Know What You Are Talking About
Again, do not make the mistake of saying to yourself: "Everybody does this daily. Why do I need this stupid class? Maybe I should transfer to another school." Or, if you do say it to yourself, hold your hands over your ears and don't listen. Even if you think you know all there is to know about this subject, you are deluding yourself. Real attorneys use big words, lots of Latin, and just plain gobbledygook gussied up to seem important.
The practice of law is cutthroat. It is no place for amateurs. Getting a passing grade in the Practice Legal Order-Tools-Zeitgeist (PLOTZ) is a condition precedent to graduation.
As Socrates once said: "The only true wisdom is knowing you know nothing," y'know?
Study! Study! Study!
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